So how many voters will you get for a run-of-the-mill blog contest? A million? Hundreds of thousands? A thousand, even? Less than 100? What's being run is a popularity contest in which many people will vote for their friends, so the result will not be a genuine reflection of quality or success.
Having been beaten before by a site that has fewer hits in a month then we have in a day, we've felt the most insulting of these results! We all put a lot of work into the blog; on the day we received our four millionth hit, we had over 8,000 hits in 24 hours, and that was not even a massive amount for us. We've had double that before, but it reflected our old average. We now get well over 20,000 hits daily, just on the quiet days; we've earned up to 50,000 hits in 24hours when busy!
What's more, we have to question where some of those blogs who beat us gets their news from. We are generally faster and more comprehensive than most if not all of them. So we do not wish to enter any contest of this sort that's conducted by a blog, no matter if we are friends with these blogs or the people who run them. We do not wish to reconsider, we do not want you to ask us again, we do not wish to debate it, and we are not interested in assurances. We just do not wish to take part—EVER!
However, we wish you good look with your contest. Rather than rob other hardworking but smaller blogs of their well-earned community award, we'd prefer not to risk our chances in humiliating defeat.
The only exception to our rule thus far has been when we were nominated in SFX magazine's first ever Blog Awards in 2011 for the category of Best Franchise-Specific Blog. As any reasonable person can understand, this is a far more legitimate poll than a Blogspot popularity contest, and it was an honour to participate.
